Group 1 Task 2: Hacking

Group 1:
Rugveda Satam
Kenni Fernandez
Atish Jadhav
Krishna Bonda
Luis Remberto Canedo Arze

All about Hackers and Hacking

As it has already been discussed in the lectures, we know that the term ‘Hacking’ does not always means a criminal activity. There are various definitions associated to hacking as mentioned below:

1. Hacking is practice of modifying the computer’s software or hardware in order to

accomplish a goal outside the creator’s original purpose.
2. Cracking of code can simply be called as hacking.
3. The concept of hacking can be associated with the basic human nature of being curious.

If someone is hiding something, the basic human curiosity is to find out what’s being

hidden. This is nothing but hacking. The only point here is how you are making use of

the knowledge you have, in a good or bad manner.

The person who practises hacking is called a ‘hacker’. Many decades ago, a community of expert programmers and networking wizards who worked on micro-computers and ARPANET developed the concept of hackers. According to them the hackers are the one’s who built the Internet, UNIX system, they run the Usenet and created the World Wide Web. There is another group of people in the software industry who claim themselves to be hackers but they aren’t and they are the crakers.This group simply likes breaking into computers and phreaking into the phone system. In simple words, hackers build things while crakers break them. These can also be called as ‘white-hat hackers’ and ‘black-hat hackers’ respectively. Thanks to Hollywood, the concept of hackers is always associated to the dark side of technology (just as in Stars Wars movie, the dark side of force).Majority of computer users use the word hacker as a synonym of crime. But that’s not true. If we associated this with Hollywood the White hat hackers are the real world technology heroes who save our systems and valuable information to be stolen by the villains or the Black hat hackers.

But, what can be the motivation for being a black hat hacker? Definitely, money, glory or sometimes just simply curiosity to know other people’s information.

If we consider ethically definitely the black hat hackers are performing an unethical act, however one thing that we cannot ignore to appreciate is the vast amount of knowledge required to perform hacking. Hats off to these hackers. Really!